Design Tools Get the Human Touch

What's text-based, hard to navigate, and heavily reliant on tree-based menu structures? Historically, that would be traditional CAD and design tool software. Yet in the new world of smaller, graphics-rich mobile devices and the consumer-driven trend around simplification, the once arcane segment of 3D CAD, simulation, and PLM tools is being made over to deliver a more natural and compelling user experience for engineers and designers.

Groundbreaking design tool releases have typically been all about new power features and the ever-expanding suite footprint with user interface and usability concerns nearly always taking a back seat. But with ample processing power (think multicore computers) and memory now readily available, and state-of-the-art input devices and high-resolution and touch screens changing the way users interact with their systems, technology is no longer the stumbling block to offering a robust design tool experience within the context of a visually rich and easy-to-navigate environment.

The 3DLive turntable serves as the navigation paradigm throughout Dassault Systèmes' VS platform.

"If you go back 10 years, the industry put functionality first, and the user interface was lipstick just put on at the end," says Brian Lindauer, senior vice president, Arbortext product development at PTC. "Now user interface takes on much more of a primary priority in product planning. It's not a nice to have -- usability is slated into the product from the get go."

One of the biggest influences on user interface design for modern software platforms is the rise of the mobile experience, be it on smartphones or tablets. As users become accustomed to the clean, yet graphically-compelling experiences of touch screens, gesture interfaces, and targeted apps in their personal lives, they expect the programs they depend on for professional use to operate in much the same manner.

"Web apps on the iPhone and iPad have reintroduced the idea of richer interfaces, more graphics, and animation, while adding the notion of gestures and direct manipulation of objects," explains Steve Krug, principle of Advanced Common Sense, a usability consultancy. "On the desktop, we've been limited to drag and drop."

Beyond gestures, finger flicks, touch interfaces, and rotating objects around to change orientation, the smaller real estate of mobile platforms is also causing design tool providers to rethink the layout and structure of their programs. Progressive disclosure, a longstanding user interface principle that presents only the minimum data required for the task at hand in order to reduce clutter, is a far more important UI design principle today now that pixel space is at a premium, notes Theo Mandel, PhD, president of Interface Design and Development, LLC, a user interface consultancy.

"More fully featured applications tend to throw lots of stuff at users and you can't do that on a mobile device," Mandel explains. "With progressive disclosure, you only give people what they want at the time, and then you give them ways to go deeper when and if they want."

I believe current touch screens (Ipads and even the biggest tablets available) to be too small for efficient use for "next generation" human touch input. A mouse still seems the best way to turn human input (with small, precise motions) into commands for the computer.

To go beyond this, I think we'll begin to see larger input systems (beyond tablets). Microsoft blazed the way with Kinect. Imagine if you will, a Kinect vision system watching hand gestures, combined with haptic feedback gloves which would give some tactile feel to the 3D model you're manipulating with your hands. Maybe not surgical-precision fine feel, but the at least the feel that you're manipulating an object the size of a basketball in front of the screens on your desk.

The tricky part will be disengaging your hands from the 3D model to initiate commands. The mental image I have is your hands stuck on a sticky ball, unable to release it.

The changes like the user interface all come along when design teams finally realize that tailoring the product to user needs and user ease ups the product's value. Apple is a master of this. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad all existed in different forms before Apple. But before Apple, users didn't care much for those early products.

Facebook beat MySpace for the same reason. While cool technology wins the first wave, the second wave is usually won when companies addresses the users' needs.

An Ipad may not be the best device to design a component, but it is a fantastic tool to display a design to potential customers and management. The ability to zoom, pan, and rotate on a tablet is remarkable.

I remember when 100 mhz Pentiums became available and game software was readily available with graphics that blew away most CAD programs avaialbe on the market. Now the CAD software can display graphics with stunning effectivity.

Good point, Tim, about the iPad and field applications in engineering.

To your other point, not only are CAD programs getting so rich in graphics capabilities, they are also borrowing lots of technology from the gaming world so we're starting to see photo realism and animation as a standard part of CAD platforms. This allows engineers to visualize how a particular mechanism might move within a design to check for parts interferences, for example, or to see how a particular part of a machine might operate from an ergonomics standpoint. All pretty amazing stuff!

Virtual Reality (VR) headsets are getting ready to explode onto the market and it appears all the heavy tech companies are trying to out-develop one another with better features than their competition. Fledgling start-up Vrvana has joined the fray.

A Tokyo company, Miraisens Inc., has unveiled a device that allows users to move virtual 3D objects around and "feel" them via a vibration sensor. The device has many applications within the gaming, medical, and 3D-printing industries.

While every company might have their own solution for PLM, Aras Innovator 10 intends to make PLM easier for all company sizes through its customization. The program is also not resource intensive, which allows it to be appropriated for any use. Some have even linked it to the Raspberry Pi.

solidThinking updated its Inspire program with a multitude of features to expedite the conception and prototype process. The latest version lets users blend design with engineering and manufacturing constraints to produce the cheapest, most efficient design before production.

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